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Re: [PATCH] caret diagnostics
On Thu, 14 Aug 2008, Robert Dewar wrote:
> Manuel López-Ibáñez wrote:
> > 2008/8/14 Joseph S. Myers <joseph@codesourcery.com>:
> > > But in any case the default should be the default with no configure
> > > option, users liking it should find their makefiles work the same
> > > everywhere and users not liking it can add the opposite option.
> >
> > Then we are not going to get correct locations ever. New users do not
> > read the manual. Neither old users do. New functionality disabled by
> > default will be lost for both. I am fairly sure that a significant
> > percentage of GCC developers (not just users) do not know about
> > -fdiagnostics-show-option.
>
> Users are not beta testers. Forcing inconvenience on users to benefit
> developers is not justified for a relatively minor issue like this.
> Changing the default here would have a huge impact, I think probably
> some developers do not realize the impact that changing messages or
> output has on people developing large systems for which they expect
> stable compiler output, e.g. for test cases.
We certainly do change the *text* of messages to improve them (this
includes putting in more information that can fit within the existing
single-line format), and add new messages following the standard formats,
but I believe we should leave consumers able to rely on certain aspects of
the output that follow the GNU Coding Standards and not start inserting
new, non-standard lines in the output that would dominate the standard
ones.
--
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com